I'm not a big clapper. Never have been. I don't know why. I just feel silly doing it. Clapping.

It's goofy. I mean I'm physically capable of clapping. I just don't like it. I'm self-conscious about it. Slapping my hands together.

What a funny way to show appreciation. Making noise with your hands. I do get excited about stuff. I am capable of appreciating stuff. But I am rarely so excited that I am moved to force my palms to collide with each other.

So I save my clapping for really important stuff.

Unless you turn a double play or beat out a bunt, don't expect me to clap for you.

I'll tell you how much I appreciate you, and how much I value your work. But I doubt if I'll clap. Sorry.

All cartoons being produced now are either educational or Japanese.

My daughter can't watch a simple Saturday morning cartoon without either being taught how to count or seeing big-eyed, cheaply animated robotic dinosaurs attack each other, flying through the air and emitting speech that is unsynchronized with their mouths.

All I want is to be able to turn on the TV and see a duck get hit in the head with an anvil, or see a rabbit dodge shotgun pellets. Where is the sheer silliness?

Educational cartoons earnestly desire to fill their little half hour with an enriching lesson so that no part of the child's day is wasted. The ultimate tragedy would be for a parent to put their child in front of the TV for a few minutes with a bowl of cereal (while the parent did something frivolous like take a shower, do the laundry or read a magazine article) and that child not develop some greater awareness of colors, letters, or learn how to share. But what's the point of knowing the difference between a square and a rhombus if you don't first know how to laugh at the word "rhombus"?

The other alternative, Japanimation, has never appealed to me. There is something about Japanese culture that is so oblique, so alien to my Western-ness, that I just have never been able to appreciate it. I just don't get it. The Japanese cartoon is an assault on all of my senses.

I predict that soon the two formats will merge and our kids will spend thier Saturday mornings learning how to count in Japanese. And then Western Civilization will collapse.

What a deal. A $90 boxed set of DVD's going for $6 on Amazon. Click here.

Yeah, they're black and white public domain silent films, but Metropolis, Birth of a Nation, and Buster Keaton's The General are definitely worth the six bucks.

It is possible that these won't be the cleaned-up versions available elsewhere, but I'm willing to take a chance.

Based on a very complicated formula that I came up with, here is who I believe will put up the best offensive numbers this upcoming baseball season (no real suprises):

1. Albert Pujols
2. Barry Bonds
3. Todd Helton
4. Alex Rodriguez
5. Vladamir Guerrero
6. Gary Sheffield
7. Carlos Beltran
8. Brian Giles
9. Manny Ramirez
10. Luis Gonzalez

Top 10 most valuable starting pitchers:

1. Curt Schilling
2. Mark Prior
3. Pedro Martinez
4. Randy Johnson
5. Roy Halladay
6. Kerry Wood
7. Javier Vazquez
8. Mike Mussina
9. Roy Oswalt
10. Kevin Brown

Other predictions: Tampa Bay will not finish in last place in the AL East for the first time in their history, the Cubs will not be in the postseason, the Rangers will be to 2004 what the Marlins were to 2003, and a man named Milt sitting in the third-baseline seating section will accidentally spill his beer on a woman in front of him during the seventh-inning stretch at Fenway on a Tuesday night in July in a game wherein a visiting left-handed pitcher has given up three earned runs and the Red Sox have committed two errors, marking only the fourth time in Major League history that this has happened.

If you ever catch yourself wondering whether it is a good idea to buy a two-year-old a kazoo...

believe me, it isn't.

I just noticed that all of the albums I listed below are about ten years old.

What's THAT all about?

You've got a five disc CD changer in your car and 300 miles to drive. Based on how you feel today, what do you put in there?

Me?

Everclear - Sparkle and Fade
Weezer - you know, the blue one
Lyle Lovett - Joshua Judges Ruth
Meatloaf - The first one
Better Than Ezra - Deluxe

I've often pondered the fact that everyone is pretty good at something, and I've thought about how for some reason I'm not good at anything.

So I've always thought that I've just never gotten around to trying whatever it is that I have a God-given gift for. What if I could be a world champion steer wrestler and just don't know it because I've never done it? Somebody else is out there winning my prize money and getting my big trophy belt buckles, all because I've never had a chance to wrestle a steer and show the world just how wonderful I am?

Maybe I could possibly be the world's most reknown basoon player. I could be selling millions of records and touring Europe. But I'm not. Because I've never picked up a basoon.

Well that's the way that I used to think, anyway... until a couple of weeks ago. I've found my calling.

All my life I have seen those machines full of stuffed animals - you know the ones with the big claw that barely grabs a piece of the toy before missing it altogether - and all my life I have seen people put their quarters in only to walk away empty handed. I thought that surely it had to be a rip-off. No one ever wins anything out of those.

But a few weeks ago my little girl begged me to put some money in the machine to get her something out of it. I'm sure that she was thinking that it works just like a Coke machine - put your money in, get a toy out.

Well I put the money in, manuevered the claw, hit the button, the claw dropped, grabbed a pink dog and dropped it in the chute. First try.

Since then, every time I go past one of those machines I put my money in, and invariably on the first or second try, I win. I have never had to try more than twice to get something out.

Now we have a toybox full of cheap, stupid stuffed animals that only cost me about five bucks, tops. But that is a small price to pay for finding your niche in life.

So this is my offer to you... you need something out of one of those machines? Call me. I'm the guy that can get it for you.

So is everyone in the tax return preparation business now?

Can you tell me who would actually take their tax forms to a used car dealership?

"Yeah, uh. Looks like yer getting a tree-tousand dollar refund here. We have a very fine Buick wit low mileage for jus about that. Jus sign right here, we'll take care uh da rest."

Yesterday, my little girl uttered the words that every father longs to hear:

"Daddy, can we go outside and play football?"

Every night when I go to bed I hope that I wake up the next morning to find that the St. Louis Cardinals have made a big play to secure the services of Greg Maddux for the upcoming season.

The Cards will be playing for third place in the NL Central, at best, without quality starters in the number three and four spot in the rotation this year. Barring serious injury to their respective pitching staffs, I think that the Astros and the Cubs are going to roll the NL. The rest of the NL is simply going to have to come up with a means of managing the damage.

Have you ever thought that maybe we could come up with better presidential candidates by just having everyone draw straws?

Maybe we ought to tape American Idol and watch it after the toddler goes to bed.

Last night she was hollering at her Care Bears, "YOU. CAN'T. SIIIIINNNGGGG".

What kind of guy locks his truck with the keys in the ignition and the engine running?

You're looking at him, Lupe.

I need someone who knows something about baseball, or someone who is a Braves fan (heh-heh), to tell me if they've heard or seen anything out of John Smoltz this off-season... Is he coming back? Do you think he'll be dominant again? Is he done for? What is your opinion on the future of John Smoltz?

I need to know. Thank you.

Okay. I'll admit it. I've watched the first three episodes of American Idol...

...and the gig is up. I see what they are doing.

Ten thousand people show up to the auditions, but in each city only about a thousand make it in front of the panel of celebrity judges, (according to Paula Abdul's interview on Letterman last night.) What happens to the other nine thousand? It is obvious that they are weeded out somehow... but what sort of selection process promotes the sort of non-talent and pig-ignorance that we get to see on TV? Surely these are not the 1,000 best candidates.

You see, what must be happening is that they promote a small handful of the very best and a whole load of the absolute worst. The moderate talents and marginally musical are disqualified by someone other than Simon. Which is okay, really. It is great entertainment to see terrible singers who think they are the Second Coming get their pitiful little egos ripped to shreds. But I wish they would just can the whole "you're wasting our time" act. No. Someone else promoted them to that level of the competition and it is that person who is guilty of the time-wasting.

No one walks in that big audition room who wasn't sent there, and the really really awful ones are being set up the whole way. I imagine they go through the lower levels of the process, audition by audition, being promoted all the way to the top while each judge is snickering into his hand saying, "Wait till Simon sees this one!" You can even see this in the way the terrible ones are interviewed by that host guy before they go in. It is a joke the whole way.

So the whole point is that at this level of the competition, the celebrity judges really aren't judging at all. The decisions have already been made further down the line. There are no gray-area contestants. They can either carry a tune or they are really really awful. The judges are just there to rip on the horrible ones. And I'm not saying it isn't funny. That's just the way it is.

What I really wonder about is why there are so many people who think that they have what it takes to "make it" in the music business. Why do they express such rage and disbelief when they are told that they can't sing? Why do they always express that they are going to make it anyway? Are there that many delusional people in the world?

I'm sure there is something behind that, and I'm sure it says something about our generation, but I'm not sure what, and I'm too tired to figure it out.

One more thing. If the cut-off age wasn't 25, I'd be blowing that competition away. Yeah. Whatever.

I wish there were some kind of similar competition for people who are good at Muppet wrestling. I would be SOOO there.

I've come to the conclusion that Magna Doodles are amillenial.

My biggest problem with television is that when I actually have time to watch something, there's nothing on. And don't tell me I need to get cable. Whenever we go to a hotel or stay with relatives who have it, I'm all like, "Wow. 78 channels!", and then I'm all like, "Okay... there's absolutely nothing on."

But the local stations are just terrible. When did old reruns and "B" westerns get replaced by informercials and Jenny Jones? I mean you simply cannot find a movie or a classic TV show on Saturday afternoon anymore.

Any of you who grew up in St. Louis, do you remember how great KPLR channel 11 used to be before it sold out to the WB and before there was such a thing as informercials? There was ALWAYS something great on. They had the best after-school cartoons and they always had three pretty good movies on Sunday afternoon. Not to mention that they were THE home of the Cardinals and Blues. Every single Cards game was on channel 11.

If I was in charge of programming at a television station, I would do things a lot different. I know that I'm not in charge. I'm just saying "If I was".

It would be the network by Duane, for guys who like the same stuff as Duane. You could call it the "D".

Buddy: Hey man, what're you watching.
Other Buddy: Oh, man, I'm watching the "D". They've got the best shows ever back to back to back.
Buddy: Cool.
Other Buddy: Totally.

For example... here would be my daily schedule from 6 a.m. to 12 p.m.

6:00 AM Looney Toons
7:00 AM Sesame Street
8:00 AM The Muppet Show
8:30 AM Three Stooges / Little Rascals
9:00 AM Dukes of Hazzard
10:00 AM The A-Team
11:00 AM SportsCenter
12:00 PM Afternoon Movie
2:00 PM Cops
2:30 PM World's Scariest Police Chases
3:00 PM Leave it to Beaver
3:30 PM GI Joe
4:00 PM Star Trek
5:00 PM Star Trek: TNG
6:00 PM The Andy Griffith Show
6:30 PM The Beverly Hillbillies
7:00 PM The Simpsons
7:30 PM Cheers
8:00 PM Seinfeld
8:30 PM Taxi
9:00 PM Hill Street Blues
10:00 PM David Letterman
11:00 PM Craig Kilborn
12:00 AM SNL

Of course everything is subject to being pre-empted by Cardinals Baseball or Rams Football... and I would make sure to secure the express written consent of each league.

Then again, if there were such a network I would never get anything done. And if you would admit it, neither would you. That network would be so awesome, the other stations would get jealous and have the FCC force it off the air, but not before national productivity plummeted to an all-time low.

Anyway. I guess we are stuck with what we are stuck with.

Ooh, ooh. Turn on channel 8. It's the Farm Report.

Since some folks have posted a list of their reading for the previous year, I thought I would like to do the same, but not to illicit a “Hey look at him” sort of a response or even a “Wow. He sure reads some dumb stuff” response.

I just thought it would be good to record what I’ve read and to know what year I read it, and this is as good a place as any to write it down.

The side benefit is that if you are interested in my two-bit opinion of anything on this list, I’d be happy to provide it… within a week or two of your asking.

Some of the stuff I read in 2003:

Through New Eyes – Jordan
The Binding of God – Lillback
The Call of Grace - Shepherd
Paradise Restored - Chilton
The Meaning of the Millennium - Clouse
The Puritan Hope - Murray
A Quest for Godliness - Packer
The Guise of Every Graceless Heart - Elniff
The Study of Liturgy – Wainwright
Christian Liturgy - Senn
Leviathan - Hobbes
Robinson Crusoe - Defoe
Social Contract - Rousseau
Origin of Inequality - Rousseau
Scarlet Letter - Hawthorne
Federalist Papers
Anti-Federalist Papers
Democracy in America - Tocqueville
C. G. Finney's Autobiography
Walden - Thoreau
Pride and Prejudice - Austen
Battle Cry of Freedom - McPherson
The Killer Angels - Shaara
The Grapes of Wrath - Steinbeck
Symphonic Theology - Poythress
Lectures on Calvinism - Kuyper
The Calvinistic Concept of Culture – H. Van Til
Ideas Have Consequences - Weaver
Typology of Scripture – Fairbairn
The God of Promise and the Life of Faith - Hafemann
The King James Version Debate – Carson
The Ancient Text of the New Testament – Van Bruggen
The New England Mind – Miller
HP & The Sorcerer’s Stone - Rowling
HP & The Chamber of Secrets - Rowling

Bring me the head of Mike Martz.